


Testing New Material

by AmblieyRambly



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, Gay Disasters, M/M, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmblieyRambly/pseuds/AmblieyRambly
Summary: It's been a few months since Derry, and Richie's back on tour to test some new material. But after bombing two shows and his new tour manager booking a gig in Maine, things are looking pretty bleak. That is, until a strange fan email opens some new possibilities.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1: Richie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sporklift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporklift/gifts).



> Hi there! This is a co-authored, alternating POV fic, with odd chapters by Richie and even chapters by Eddie. We hope you enjoy the story, and thanks for checking it out!
> 
> Content warning: The f slur is used in a self referential context, with a gay character using it in reference to himself. Please be aware that it is there, and stay safe. :)

I was hardly three shows into what could hardly be called a tour, and it was becoming clearer and clearer that I needed to fire my fucking agent. I should’ve known bombing a show, falling off the grid and then jumping back on the circuit was a bad idea, but.

Anyways, we’re heading to show three in the shitty van my new agent Hank rented for us, and already I’m not feeling it. 

“You’re testing new material. Going to New York or L.A. is the last thing you want,” Hank said for the fortieth fucking time. “You’re not saying anything. You’re pissed aren’t you?’

“I don’t go to Maine. Period. It’s in my contract,” I hated that I could hear my voice shaking. Hank was definitely taking it as anger, and I wasn’t about to say anything that made him think any differently. 

“Just one show. It’s backwaters Maine. You’ve already bombed—”

“I didn’t fucking bomb.” 

“… The audiences were cold.”

“The audiences want me to whip my dick out and give them a fucking puppet show. I don’t do that shit anymore. I’m fucking done with it,” I kicked my legs up on the dashboard. The van was shitty enough that I wasn’t worried about knocking some dirt around. Hank’s brain was slowly melting as he tried to find some way to spin this.

“I think it’s great that you’re writing your own material again. Really, that last special, whew, I can’t blame you for firing that writer. But, you got to face it. The jokes aren’t landing, and it’s…”

“Just fucking say it.”

“Audiences can tell when you’re being honest, and your jokes aren’t honest.”

I couldn’t catch the words before they flew out of my mouth.

“What the fuck do you mean by that, huh? Oh, you think audiences are so goddamned smart? I stood up there and performed  _ three _ fucking specials written by three separate writers and had all of them fucking  _ conned _ into thinking I wrote them. Just say what you actually fucking think okay? I’m a faggot, alright? I’m doing faggy material and my fanbase hates it. Can we fucking move on?”

Maybe I wouldn’t have to fire my agent. Maybe he’d quit. 

“And I’m not going to motherfucking bum fuck Maine.”

***

Three hours later, we were in Maine.

“You got me a gig at a lobster bar? You’ve kidding me,” I was trying to swallow the lump in the back of my throat. It was too close. I could smell Derry from here. 

“It’s a mostly blind audience, completely out of your demographic. Let me get you a drink. Loosen you up. Come on.”

I can’t exaggerate just how much of a shithole this place was. It wasn’t even a charming shithole. The tables were laminated with a red gingham print. There were more mounted fish corpses than there were patrons. The stage wasn’t even a stage. Just a few tables pushed to the side and a karaoke mic set up. 

The worst part was the bibs. On each person in the restaurant were these lobster bibs with little cartoon lobsters holding forks and knives, licking their weird lobster lips. In big black print were the words “get shucked”.

“You don’t shuck a lobster,” I whispered to Hank as he put a neat Wild Turkey in my hand. 

“Do you need anything else?” Hank was texting. Maybe he was writing his notice as we spoke.

“A lobotomy?” He didn’t laugh. 

“Go get ‘em,” he said as he finished up his text and sat at the bar. 

There wasn’t a single person in the room under the age of 60. They looked like the clean cut kind of guys that’d shut my special off as soon as I opened my mouth. I couldn’t even give a fuck at the moment. Maybe if I totally fucking bombed, they’d boo me out and I could go home. 

I shot my drink, slapped myself around, and got ready for the bomb of my life. Paycheck be damned, I want to go home. I don’t know where that is. I don’t think I’ve known for a while. But I want to go there. 

I grab the mic from the stand and look up at the audience. No one has noticed me. They’re all preoccupied with breaking open claws and dunking the sweet meat into butter. I suddenly become very aware that I haven’t eaten all day. It’s been hard to remember since the deadlights. It’s been hard to remember since—

“Hey everybody, my name is Richie Tozier and I’m a fucking faggot,” I spit without thinking. I hear the sound Hank typing furiously on his phone. This time, he’s definitely writing his 2 weeks. 

But then the weirdest thing happened. They laughed. And not in the way I was used to. Not the way the first two shows did. It was this weird sort of knowing laugh. I suddenly became aware of the fact that there wasn’t a single woman here. 

I could feel my mouth telling the next joke, but I couldn’t even tell you what it was as the lighthouse shone directly into my eyes. It came back. I gripped the mic, knowing it could kill monsters if I believed it did. Each laugh fueled the next joke and the next. I wasn’t even using my material anymore, I just—

“And then he died.” I heard myself say. The laughter stopped. “He just fucking died. And it should’ve been me, you know? I was the one who wasn’t careful. He was always careful. A real hypochondriac. I think he thought that didn’t make him brave but.”

For the first time in my life, I couldn’t talk. The room was completely silent. I lost them, again. I braced myself for something. Booing, maybe? I don’t know. But it didn’t happen. 

One of the men in the front, bleach white hair, pink polo shirt and ugly ass plaid shorts, pulled off his lobster bib and came over to me. I didn’t even realize how much I was shaking until he held me.

“We know,” he whispered. “We all know. It’s okay.” He took the mic from me and turned to the audience. “Give it up for Richie Tozier everyone.”

It was the first standing ovation I’ve had in a long fucking time.

***

We walked back to the van with arms full of Styrofoam takeout containers and all kinds of informational literature. The man in the pink shirt, Paul, worked for Equity Fights AIDs and carried on him every helpline, every informational packet, and every sized condom known to man. He gave me his number and told me to text him if I needed him.

“He must’ve thought I was cute,” I joked as I climbed into the passenger’s seat. I regretted it the moment I said it.

“You got a fan email,” he was good at ignoring my jokes at this point. “He kept emailing you during the show.”

“Didn’t know I still had those,” I said back. “Tell them I’m done doing that old shit.”

“They said they know you, from school,” he kept staring straight. I now could tell he looked really pale. 

“Do you want me to drive Hank?”

“Did you go to school with more than one Eddie?”

“Huh?”

He almost looked like he was going to puke.

“The guy who emailed you. His name is Eddie, like that guy you were—what the fuck happened when you went to Maine?”

My whole body felt like it was vibrating. Eddie was—I saw him. I was there. I fucking held him as he—and he made that stupid fucking joke. 

“Give me your phone.”

Hank dug his phone out of his pocket. He was shaking as he handed it off to me. Please be him. Please don’t let this be another one of that fucking clown’s—

Hank slammed on the breaks, knocking the phone out of my hands, just in time to not hit a deer. We both sat for a second, catching our breath. I left the phone on the dash, too afraid to look, but I could see the email load in the reflection of the windshield. 

It was him. 


	2. Chapter 2: Eddie

I had no fucking idea what happened to me. Once second, I was down in that fucking dark piss-filled fucking cavern under the town. One second, I fucking javeline-shish-kabobed that clown right through his fucking face. Then I was leaning over Richie, shaking him awake - he had to see this shit, I thought I killed it, I really fucking thought I’d done it - and then 

There was this pain wracking through me, a diseased claw piercing through bones and right out my chest and the metallic taste of blood, sticky like syrup, in my mouth and then 

Then I woke up in the hospital with an oxygen mask on my face. The cannula in my arm itched like fire and there was nobody there. Not Richie or Bill or Ben, Bev, or Mike. The nurse came in and, after all these tests and scans, asked me if I had anyone I wanted to call. 

And, the thing was, I didn’t have anyone’s number. With how quick every fucking thing went, we didn’t have time to exchange phone numbers before we headed down to the sewer. And, anyway, the possible what-if of a phone that wouldn’t stop ringing made my palms sweat and the EKG bleep faster and I wasn’t really in the headspace for that shit. 

It didn’t occur to me until two hours later that maybe I should’ve said my wife, but by that point I was on the mend anyway, and, really, I would’ve rather she get pissed, assume I walked out and serve me with divorce papers than go through the whole song and dance if she’d known I’d been fucking comatose. Permenant fucking house arrest and a themometer up my ass for the rest of my life. (God, if Richie would have heard me thinking shit like that, I’m sure he’d do something gross, like throw me a jar of petroleum jelly or something.) 

The doctor told me I was in that house on Neibolt when it went down. Officer Buttons, a German Shepherd on the force, found me under a pile of rubble and barely breathing. They didn’t say it, but they seemed surprised my piss came back clean for crack and syphillis and fucking tetanus or what the fuck ever else the screws in that place could carry. 

And here’s the fucking weird thing: there’s no damage to my spinal cord, no missplaced organs or any of that shit. I had a dirty fucking claw ripped through me, and, when I asked about gangrene, the doctor asked me where I’d been cut. 

Sure, an entire second floor of a building fell on me, but apparently the bannister on the stairs took the brunt of most of it. 

I was expected to make a full recovery. 

I went to physical therapy three times a week, eventually worked my way up to running on the treadmill, and then on the streets, and then I ran off Long Island and got a place in Queens. I did my fucking best to figure out what the hell happened to me. 

Statistically speaking, even though I don’t remember all of it, there’s no way I should’ve come back from what happened. It’s claw skewered me like I thought I skewered It, I was coughing up blood. At the very least I should be parapalegic, if not quad. And most likely I should’ve been six feet under the ground getting eaten by worms. 

But, I was not and I was  _ definitely _ not and I didn’t know what to do about it. 

I didn’t want to think about the fact that I woke up alone, either. If they could, they would’ve been there, right? At least Richie would’ve. He would’ve been sitting at my fucking bedside with some awful and cheesy Hello Nurse schtick. But, he wasn’t. And that must’ve meant that he couldn’t be. 

They wouldn’t’ve left me there if they didn’t  _ have  _ to. Not in that cold, dank, darkness. Not in the graywater. 

So, I thought, they  _ couldn’t  _ be there. I didn’t want to think what that meant. 

I scoured obits online, and couldn’t find anything. And, when Bill’s movie came out and he was at the premier, I almost fucking cried I was so relieved. 

They made it out, all of them. With that information, I  _ did  _ fucking cry. I had no fucking clue, what’d happened specifically, but they made it out of the sewer. 

We all did. Me a little later. 

And it wasn’t that I wanted to jump to a million fucking conclusions, but I had no clue what happened. 

They left me. They didn’t - the fucking crack house fell on me. But they didn’t drag me out. I had no idea. They went about their lives and weren’t waiting at the hospital. But I couldn’t very well expect that from them. That would’ve been ridiculous. And, yeah, I’ve always been kind of selfish. Mom and Myra and everyone always reminded me of it, but I wasn’t so much that I thought everyone would put their lives on hold. We killed a fucking murder clown, and that probably took most of everyone’s vacation days. 

But no one called me either, not afterwards. Not even Richie. 

And, if I’ll be entirely honest, now that we remembered each other, there was a part of me that assumed I’d never be getting rid of him ever again. I kind of thought he’d try to wrangle me on Twitter or just text me weird fucking leaves or something. But I hadn’t heard from him since...since then. 

What was happening, very clearly, was that I was fixating on something small because this shit was just too hard to process. I didn’t even know if I fucking died. I didn’t know if we got the fucking clown. I didn’t know what happened to my friends, or if they forgot all about me all over again, and if not, why they didn’t check in. 

This isn’t really trauma I could talk about with a psychiatrist. If I wanted Xanax and not a straight-jacket, all near-death experiences, and demon clowns, have to be filtered through a predisposition to addiction, growing up poor, frigidity, and impossible anxieties. (Though, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, fun fact, doesn’t really work when you know your fear of lepers vomiting in your mouth isn’t entirely unfounded.) 

And, whether or not they forgot about me, I figured I couldn’t do this shit alone. I needed the Xanax, certainly, but also I needed someone to talk about this shit. I needed answers. 

I found Richie online. The contact info said it was for business inquiries only, but it was the only lead I had. And I wanted to talk to Richie first. He’d know what to say. He could explain it, and not make it a whole big fucking deal. He’d tell me why he, and everyone else, wasn’t there. 

And, so, I had to go through his fucking manager, typing up an email. 

Shit. The tone was a little difficult. Something like,  _ Hey, asshole, remember me?  _ didn’t exactly fire the way I wanted it to. Nothing did, honestly, but I ended up going with something a little more edging around the bush. 

> From:  [ edwardkaspbrak@aol.com ](mailto:edwardkaspbrak@aol.com)
> 
> To:  [ richietoziercomedy@gmail.com ](mailto:richietoziercomedy@gmail.com)
> 
> Subject: An Old Friend 
> 
> _ Richie,  _
> 
> _ It’s been a little while since I’ve seen you and I have some questions if you can answer them. I’m not sure if you remember me. If you do I think we should talk.  _

> _ \- Eddie  _

__ It felt weird and stripped down, but what the hell did I know? If he forgot about the clown and each other and Derry all over again, I didn’t want to rush in with the gory details. All that’d get me was a fucking restraining order. And, if the memories all came back last time, maybe this is all it would take to jog them again. Or, maybe not. 

I half considered deleting the email three separate times. But, eventually, I punched  _ Send  _ on my computer and - off it whisked into the air. 

The reply came shortly, an hour or so later, and my hands were so clammy I had to wipe them down on the legs of my jeans before I could read. 

> From:  [ richietoziercomedy@gmail.com ](mailto:richietoziercomedy@gmail.com)
> 
> To:  [ edwardkaspbrak@aol.com ](mailto:edwardkaspbrak@aol.com)
> 
> Subject: Re: An Old Friend 
> 
> __ _ This is the official email for business inquiries. For personal matters, to make sure Richie sees it, I’d recommend contacting him directly.  _
> 
> __ _ Best, _
> 
> __ _ Hank Thompson  _

__ And, great. Just, fucking great. Granted, I was glad I’d decided not to front-load with the demon clown and near death experiences. But this was still my only way to get to Richie. In hindsight, I probably could have tried looking into anyone else’s contact information for answers, but before I knew what I was doing, I hit ‘Reply.’ 

> From:  [ edwardkaspbrak@aol.com ](mailto:edwardkaspbrak@aol.com)
> 
> To:  [ richietoziercomedy@gmail.com ](mailto:richietoziercomedy@gmail.com)
> 
> Subject: Re: re: An Old Friend 
> 
> _ Thanks for responding. It’s actually been so long that I don’t have any other way to find him. I know it’s not how this usually goes but we went to school together so he should know me. If you can, let him know Eddie wants to talk.  _

__ I hit ‘Send,’ feeling lost at sea. If I was this Hank guy, I don’t think I’d pass on the message. It was a long shot, I knew, but it was the only one I had. 

In the end, I didn’t have that much longer to wait. It wasn’t as though I was waiting by my computer or anything, but within twenty minutes I heard the  _ ping!  _ notification and found myself staring at the screen. 

> From:  [ richietoziercomedy@gmail.com ](mailto:richietoziercomedy@gmail.com)
> 
> To:  [ edwardkaspbrak@aol.com ](mailto:edwardkaspbrak@aol.com)
> 
> Subject: Re: re: re: An Old Friend 
> 
> _ If it’s really you meet me at the Clubhouse in Derry, tomorrow 2pm.  _

I swallowed, my mouth feeling dry. Back to Derry?  _ Seriously _ ?  _ Tomorrow?  _ What the fuck? What the hell? I had no idea why he’d suggest that. But I needed the answers, and I needed them from Richie, more. I replied, typing quickly before I could lose my nerve:  _ See you there, Richie.  _


End file.
